After three years of trying to persuade U.S. and Canadian fish and wildlife officials to back a
plan to reintroduce a sea bird to an island off the Maine coast, Stephen Kress finally got his
chance in 1973.

Kress packed six puffin chicks from Newfoundland in coffee cans and took them to Eastern Egg
Rock Island, where he fed them by hand and raised them as if he were their mother.

At the time, the technique was untested and highly unorthodox.

Today, Kress, known as the
puffin man, is regarded as a pioneer of a conservation strategy used around the world to
save sea birds from extinction.

This year, the National Audubon Society’s Project Puffin is celebrating its 40th anniversary.
And on Tuesday, Kress will return to Columbus, his hometown, to discuss his work at the Grange
Insurance Audubon Center.

“We were at the right place, at the right time, with a good idea,” Kress said during a recent
phone interview.

“His story is amazing,” said Kristin Vargo, the center’s director. “It really shows what one
individual can do.”

The project got its unofficial start in 1969, after Kress earned a master’s degree in wildlife
management at Ohio State University. He got a job with the National Audubon Society and traveled to
its Hog Island Camp in Maine to work as an ornithology instructor.

It was there that he learned about nearby Eastern Egg Rock, an island that puffins once used as
a breeding ground.

“They nested there until 1885, when the colony was wiped out by hunters,” Kress said. “They
never came back.”

That’s when he came up with the idea to relocate the birds. While the practice is common today,
wildlife officials back then weren’t so sure about Kress and his plans.

But after the success with those first six chicks, the project took off. Since then, Kress and
his team have relocated more than 900 birds to Eastern Egg Rock.

“We had a long view,” he said. “Persistence was a big part of this.”

Kress, 67, said his childhood in Bexley and central Ohio helped shape his devotion to
conservation.

He said he spent his summers and his weekends in Blacklick Woods and other area Metro Parks.

“They had a program called the junior explorers ... each weekend was a different topic,” Kress
said. “‘Reptiles and amphibians’ was my favorite.”

He spent many childhood hikes with friend Mac Albin, who today is the Metro Parks’ aquatic
ecologist.

“He had these big coffee cans that he and his dad gathered up to make a carrying case,” Albin
said. They put (the puffin chicks) in these coffee cans with some herring to keep them alive on the
way home.”

At first, Project Puffin was an exercise in patience. The birds live on the ocean for three
years before they seek a mate and nest. Then it takes five years before they reproduce.

The first birds returned to Eastern Egg Rock in 1977, drawn in by wood decoy puffins — another
Kress idea. The first chicks hatched there in 1981.

Today, the colony has about 100 nesting pairs, and Kress has used similar techniques to colonize
two other islands off Maine.

Kress estimates that his techniques, which also include taped bird calls, have been used to
successfully translocate 47 sea-bird species in at least 14 countries.

Last year, a number of Chinese crested terns, an endangered species, were lured away from
colonies on the coast of China to a rocky islet in the East China Sea.

Dan Roby, an Oregon State University wildlife ecologist who worked on the project, said 19
Chinese crested terns flocked to the islet after hearing taped bird calls.

Roby said he first used the techniques Kress pioneered to move a colony of 17,000 Caspian terns
from the mouth of Oregon’s Columbia River. The terns were feasting on millions of salmon and
steelhead raised in federal hatcheries.

Tern decoys and taped bird calls lured the birds to East Sand Island, about 5 miles away.

“The entire colony relocated in two years,” Roby said.

Kress, now vice president of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society, said he’s
pleased with his legacy.

“When I started this project I thought it would last a few years, but it’s lasted a
lifetime."